Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Will I Ever Learn??

I will not be vain. I will not be vain.

Sunday, at the Bookstore, I was talking to one of my sweet co-workers and she said that her sister in law had come in and had talked to a nice gray haired lady. Ok that is all fine and dandy but I was the nice GRAY HAIRED lady she talked to. That would not do. That would not do at all. I knew my hair was bad but you know I was kind of going for that natural look. Sure that is a lazy excuse for not coloring my hair but it was a justification. I guess here is where I should say how much I hate buying hair color. I don’t mind the coloring part but I hate having to get the color.

This is how it usually goes down. I got to Wal Mart and fight my way back to the hair products section. I slowly make my way up to the boxes because there are 5,000 other gray haired women standing there eyeing each and every box trying to remember what color she had used the last time she did her hair. I keep my eyes on the boxes because if you make eye contact with anyone then that’s another 30 minutes conversing about the number of colors, makes, brands, and ways you can color your hair. After looking at every box, picking up every box, comparing each box side by side to see which will cover the gray the best, re-thinking the whole color thing and wishing that you were over in the chocolate aisle, and checking prices you then put them all back and start over again because you made eye contact and the other lady had a better color than you had. Finally after 3 hours you make a decision and off you go to mess up your hair with a color that is not right for you but will tone down and look ok after 5 or 6 washing.

Whew.

So I stand there looking at all my choices when I spy a neat little kit that they now have…Highlights for dummies. Oh yes, there is a picture of a lady with beautiful hair on the front of the box and it is just the color that I dream of. I grabbed the box and didn’t even think twice about this. I wanted this. I wanted streaky, cute hair. I want blond dammit. Off I went with my box and my dreams of beauty. I got home and put the box on the table and then proceeded to walk around it for a couple of hours. A girl has to think about these things. Finally I moved to the bathroom and started the opening the kit. Easy Peasy, I could do this. I guess I should tell y'all that it’s about 10 PM when I started this adventure.

Well the first step of coloring went well. The color was great. It was an ash brown and ended up being all shinny and cute. I should have stopped there but I wanted those streaks. I wanted them bad. Back to the bathroom I went. It was about 10:45 when I started the streaking thing. I got the little comb thing out and pulled up little tuffs of hair all over my head. I was careful not to smear it and I made sure to stagger my tuffs so my streaks would look “natural”. I was so happy. I could just envision the looks of awe and the jealousy my hair was going to inspire. I let the streaks sit for 15 minutes then went back to the bathroom.

As soon as I looked in the mirror I knew I had messed up. My dreams came crashing down around me. Over dramatic? I don’t think so. My hair had gone from cute little streaks to great big clumps of brassy blond. It was so past blond that it looked like I had used old time bleach on it and stripped every bit of color out of it. It looked 100 times worse than bad. I could not even cry I was laughing so hard. Maybe it was just because my hair was wet that it looked so bad. Off to the bedroom I went to dry it. I swear I heard the dog snicker as I walked by. I started on the front and fluffed and puffed and the dryer the hair got the brighter it got. Oh my, I am so not a blond. I tried parting it to the side and I was blond on the left side of my head. I tried pulling it back and I was blond down the back of my head.

This is where the panic set in. I could not go out like this. I could not face my wonderful co-workers like this. I could not face myself like this so I made a mad dash to the bathroom, rooted around in the trash can, found the original bottle of hair dye and proceeded to bang it on my head trying to work every smidge of color out of it and on to my mess. Thank goodness I have a really hard head because after about 10 minutes of pounding I managed to get enough dye out to cover my cute streaks. After letting it sit for 45 minutes…it’s not after midnight…I washed it out and low and behold the blond was gone and in place was lovely orange streaks. Not only were they orange but once they were dry they were also frizzy. FABUUUU.

So now here I sit, my blond dreams washed down the drain, I shall never have cute little streakies. I shall never have that wonderful hair that creates a jealous stir when I walk on the Metro. No, oh no, instead I get to sit here with my hair pulled back in a barrette in a half hearted attempt to tame the frizz and hide the orange.

I will not be vain!

2 comments:

mwolbers said...

Ange, this is another reason you should live closer to me. I'd have done your highlights! Then if they didn't turn out, we could have had a few glasses of wine and you could have thrown marshmallows at me. Nothing harder than a marshmallow, though, since I bruise easily.
If I can walk around with frosted plum hair and hair that is so short the cowlicks on the back of my head stick straight up, making me look like an old female Alfalfa, YOU can pull off orange streaks.
You can always bring a new kit to ISOCAN and we'll have a streaking party.

JustAroundTheCorner said...

Ok the joke around Hell is that Im going to ISOCAN and getting purple hair and a tattoo!!

I CAN NOT WAIT.

The orange has calmed down a bit but they were laughing at me today because I was out in the sun on Saturday and my hair is a combo of some very odd colors and the blond keep trying to break through.